Miss
by Namaste
Summary: Foreman thinks he's moving on, but his past hasn't left him yet. Minor spoilers for Foreman's whereabouts at the start of Season Four and the end of Season Three.


"I don't have much time," Foreman had told them before he came, "just a couple of hours."

"That'd be fine," Dad had said. "She'll love to see you."

So Foreman kept his keys in his hand as he stood in the entry of the old house.

"I'm so proud of you," Mom said, and she seemed to mean it. Foreman thought that maybe she remembered today. Maybe she knew about the new job in New York. Maybe she'd ask about how it felt to have his name on the door, to have his own flock of fellows eager to learn from him.

"So proud," she repeated, and he smiled, and gave her another hug.

"Thanks," he said, and put his keys in his pocket. He turned to Dad who stood in the hallway that led back to the kitchen. The sun was shining through the windows behind him, and Foreman couldn't quite make out the expression on his father's face. "I don't have much time," he said again. "The moving van will be there by four o'clock."

He checked his watch. It wasn't noon yet. He had plenty of time. Maybe he should offer to take them all out for lunch, a celebration. He could afford it.

Dad moved down the hallway towards the kitchen, then turned left, into the living room. Mom followed him. So did Foreman. He settled himself into the old brown sofa, the arm had a corduroy cover and he nudged it aside, saw the light patch there where he'd spilled Kool-Aid on it when he was twelve, and had used bleach to try and clean it up.

Mom pushed herself back up out of her armchair. "Oh," she said, "I almost forgot. Wait right there."

Foreman turned to Dad. "She looks good. The new meds seem to be helping."

Dad moved his head slightly -- not quite a shake or a nod. "Some days," he said. Foreman still couldn't read his expression.

Then Mom was back in the room. She gave him a small box, maybe ten inches tall and a foot wide and another foot long. "I was cleaning out your closet, and thought you might want these," she said. "You can take them back to school with you."

Foreman looked up. He was about to correct her, but remembered there was no reason to even try. She'd only get more confused. He glanced over at Dad, finally able to understand the emotion he now saw in his eyes, finally realized that his eyes weren't shining because he was proud of his son, but from sorrow at what he was losing. Dad nodded slightly, but didn't say anything.

"Don't ask," Dad seemed to be saying, and Foreman didn't.

He looked at his mother again. "Sure," he said. "This will be nice." He smiled at her and she beamed at him. Foreman wondered if he was still in undergrad in her mind, or if he had moved on to med school.

He left before lunch, making excuses that traffic could be heavy, that he had to be at the new apartment before the truck and the movers arrived.

He got there two hours before the truck was due, finding a parking place just a block away. Foreman still hadn't decided whether to keep his car or sell it. As he walked down the sidewalk, his mother's box in his hands, he told himself he should sell it. He was a New Yorker now, with a Manhattan address. He should live the part and give up the car.

He let himself into the building, then into the elevator and hit the button for the sixth floor. The apartment was expensive, but Foreman reminded himself that he could afford it. He was a department head now, at one of the finest hospitals in New York.

Foreman shifted the box onto one hand as he put the key in the lock and pushed open the door. He walked in, saw the way the light came through the windows and seemed to soak into the thick white carpet. He put the box on the kitchen counter and walked through the rooms: the living room with its fireplace, the bedroom with an updated walk-in closet, the master bathroom, the smaller bedroom he'd turn into an office, the hall bath.

He pictured where his furniture would go: the dark cherry dining room table, the leather sofa, the art work he'd picked up at a gallery in Princeton.

He checked his watch again. Still nearly two hours before the truck would be there.

Foreman went back downstairs, bought some lunch, brought it back up. He sat on the floor, and used his mother's box for a table. After he ate, he leaned back against the wall and rested his eyes. He checked his watch again. Ninety minutes. He didn't want to leave, in case they were early.

His eyes drifted to the box. He crumpled up the paper that had held his sandwich, tossed it into the empty potato chip bag, put his empty cup on the floor.

Mom hadn't used any tape. She'd just folded over the top, and Foreman took hold of one edge of the cardboard, pulled it open.

He hadn't known what to expect. There was a yearbook on top -- from his senior year, followed by his junior year yearbook. The one that should have been there for his sophomore year was missing. That was the year he'd spent at the camp. The year no one knew about -- that he never talked about, that his parents never mentioned to anyone -- until House came along and put a spotlight on the biggest secret Foreman had ever had.

Foreman shook his head and reached back into the box. There were a few papers there, and he glanced at them, recognizing them from science class, the extra projects he'd done to bring his grade up after he came home.

He reached in again, his fingers touching something hard. He wrapped his fingers around the smooth surface and pulled it out.

It was blue, the paper label on the top starting to curl around the edges. "Battleship," it read, "The Classic Naval Warfare Game."

Foreman ran his fingers across the top of the plastic box, feeling the pattern in the hard, cool surface beneath them. He turned to the front of the game, opened it up.

He hadn't thought of the game in years, but it was exactly as he'd remembered it -- the grid of clear plastic on the top and the bottom, neatly spaced holes to hold the red and white plastic pegs that were still there, on the right side of the box.

On the left were the gray plastic ships, five of them: aircraft carrier, battleship, submarine, destroyer, PT boat.

He took one out and placed it in the center of the grid, then another, and another. When he was a boy, Foreman used to think he could figure out the secret, the perfect layout so Marcus would never make a hit. Spread them out, and it was harder to find each individual boat. Group them together, and there would be more misses, but once Marcus made the right guess, he'd sink them all, one after another.

"E-4," he whispered, and for a moment, he thought he heard Marcus' voice in the echo that came back to him.

"Miss."

Foreman used to think that if he could find the right order to make his guesses, he'd win. He'd lay out a grid on paper, practice in his mind, trying to find the best way to spread out each guess for maximum effect.

Winning was supposed to be about strategy, not luck. There was a method he could master. He knew it. But he could never quite find it.

"J-9," he whispered.

"Miss."

Marcus just took wild guesses, jumping from one end of the board to the other. It didn't make any sense, but he always won.

"C-3"

"Miss." Foreman looked up, thought that he heard House's voice that time, not Marcus.

Foreman pushed the game aside and reached back into the box. It was empty. No red game box to match the blue, nothing but a few more scraps of paper with his own handwriting on it -- notes to go with the science papers.

He pulled the blue game box back over to himself, took the ships off of the grid and put them back in their spot on the left side of the box. He removed the pegs -- red and white -- and put them back in their places.

The last time he and Marcus and played, they'd fought. He'd accused Marcus of cheating. Marcus had shouted back that Eric was a liar. Mom had taken the games, put one in their closet and said she was keeping the other in her room.

"When you learn to play nice, you can have them back," she'd said.

Maybe they'd never learned, Foreman thought, or maybe they'd outgrown the game anyway, and didn't care.

Within two years, he'd be at the camp, and Marcus would be well down his slow slide out of their lives.

He looked at his watch again. Only thirty minutes until the truck was due. He wondered where the time had gone, and he tossed his garbage into the empty box. He stood up and picked up the yearbooks, then put them in the closet. Maybe he'd look at them later.

He picked up the box, and the game. He put the game in the box with the rest of the garbage. It was useless without its mate. He tossed the box onto the kitchen counter again and grabbed his keys. He needed to make sure there was a parking place for the truck out front.

Foreman opened the door and stepped out into the hall. He stood there, one hand still on the door knob. He looked down the hall toward the elevator, then stepped back inside. He went into the kitchen and took out the game. Might as well keep it, he thought.

He put it in the closet with his yearbooks. Maybe, he thought, he'll find a match some day -- a red box in need of the blue. Maybe he'll find a reason to play again some day. Maybe he'd figure out the answer. Maybe he'd finally know how to win, rather than just guess. Maybe he could still learn how.


End file.
